[WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 42, Issue 207

[Jeff Raymond]

David Gerard wrote:

> So, regular editors. How do we set up a page or forum where companies
> and people written about can express editorial concerns (rather than
> e.g. legal ones), such that they know people will at least look over
> them with thought and improve the articles from there?

Dare I play the devil's advocate here and say that we should allow this sort
of thing?

Hear me out: all we need to do is say that we do not condone, promote,
discourage, or prohibit paid editing by firms, but make it explicitly clear
that such edits are, at best, treated as any other, and, at worse, watched
closer than other edits by the general community.  All edits must still
conform to [[WP:V]], [[WP:NPOV]], must be licensed via the GFDL, and may be
rejected completely if [[WP:C|consensus]] is as such, regardless.

It's an interesting situation.  On one hand, we have a pile of posts on the
en mailer talking about the necessity for accuracy and citation.  On the
other hand, we're quite militant about not letting third parties commission
other third parties to provide information that may not be as easy for Joe
Sixpack to grab and add to an article.

And yes, I know, MyWikiBiz, etc - I'm not convinced it was handled properly,
but this isn't the thread for that discussion - but I'm not sure we
shouldn't be tolerant of this sort of thing.  After all, Microsoft merely
got caught - it's likely happening anyway without our knowledge.
-Jeff

-- 
If you can read this, I'm not at home.